It's been a while since I've tried it, but what happens if I fire up Steam on a second PC? Am I still restricted to a single active instance? Do I have to do the yank the network cable / Play Offline trick to play a different game at the same time? The reason I'm saying this is because as a parent, the last thing I want is to have to jump through hoops because my sons want to play Rayman Origins on our Steam Console while I'm trying to play Left 4 Dead 2 on my gaming PC. And I'm loathe to setup a second Steam account and having to double-dip.

As far as the console itself... I'm not sure what to think. I don't see how they can keep it affordable and still compete with everyone else. How do they subsidize it? An Amazon partnership comes to mind, or maybe a cell phone style subscription / contract deal (BLEH!). Aren't they aligned with Sony or something?

Maybe it is just me being a fascist, baby-murdering authoritarian, but I actually like the idea of a minor 400 pound gorilla like Steam creating a slimmed down "standard gaming build" against which developers can compatibility test PC games prior to release. This, hopefully, would reduce bug infested first releases and further reduce mean time between bug fixes.

It's been a while since I've tried it, but what happens if I fire up Steam on a second PC? Am I still restricted to a single active instance? Do I have to do the yank the network cable / Play Offline trick to play a different game at the same time? The reason I'm saying this is because as a parent, the last thing I want is to have to jump through hoops because my sons want to play Rayman Origins on our Steam Console while I'm trying to play Left 4 Dead 2 on my gaming PC. And I'm loathe to setup a second Steam account and having to double-dip.

As far as the console itself... I'm not sure what to think. I don't see how they can keep it affordable and still compete with everyone else. How do they subsidize it? An Amazon partnership comes to mind, or maybe a cell phone style subscription / contract deal (BLEH!). Aren't they aligned with Sony or something?

I built my current PC for around £400. Pretty sure if you were bulk buying you could actually get better performance for much cheaper... In the end they'd be cheaper and more powerful than any rumoured next gen consoles....

Also, I'm going to be surprised if this thing runs Linux out of the box. That's going to cut out a lot of the AAA publishers which would dull a lot of the consumer appeal I think.

I don't think the underlying OS will matter all that much to the end user. With a polished dashboard, and a GabeCube app store, would anyone really care if Ubuntu (or some other distribution's) kernel were under the hood? Probably not.

I think the endgame is to lock the hardware down so that Big Picture and the Steam Box would run on a dedicated Ubuntu kernel. You wouldn't have to worry about drivers (still an issue in Linuxlandia), or Licenses (a problem with all other OSes), and you could refactor games against one hardware target.

If you think about it....most of the Source Engine stuff run on Linux. The Unreal engine also runs on Linux via WINE. Many of the F2P MMOs that Steam uses to pad their release schedule also run on WINE(DDO, LOTRO, EQ2, DCUO, etc.). Looking down the list of popular RPGs and FPS titles....Farcry3, Diablo 3, Skyrim, World of Warcraft, GW2, and tons of others all run. You don't encounter a "garbage" rating on WineHQ until you get to Activision titles like Call of Duty. Those don't work out well on Penguin powered machines.

It's totally technically possible to launch a linux driven GabeCube with much of the existing Steam Store inventory available for play.

I'm pretty sure that story's been updated since I wrote my original post. I don't recall reading that portion, just a quote from Gabe stating how this platform would be heavily controlled and curated. Given that I saw a number of prominent people who railed against Windows 8 (including Notch) calling this box a double standard, I'm guessing as is often the case, Gabe was quoted first and given context later. If they plan to allow competitors on after all, then that's awesome and good on them.

Valve should remember the failure of Windows Media Center to make real penetration of PCs in living rooms. And there are probably more TV watchers than hardcore gamers.

Dell, HP, etc all went down this road with DVR functionality in PCs. I'm not sure how excited they'll be to try again.

Right! Especially faced with the potential of new consoles from Sony and MS with pricing around $399. In the end when consumers are faced with a choice and it appears all things are equal.. consumers go with the cheaper option.

Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarterDelivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.

My guess it that Valve has some kind of secret sauce for this thing that will make it stand out. They don't tend to just make another attempt at what people are already doing. I've no idea what that secret sauce could be but I guess we'll find out soon enough. Personally, I could even get behind the idea of a cheap box that will just do a lag-free real-time stream of anything in my Steam library from my PC to my TV in the basement. Kind of like a Steam Extender or some such. But that's decidedly not a mainstream product.

How open will the Steam Box be? It could be a great value if you can also dual boot this thing into a clean Ubuntu or Windows 7 install and use it as a desktop computer as well. If that's the case, I could pass on upgrading my desktop for the foreseeable future.

Eh, don't make plans around it yet.

But also, according to Gabe it might not be as open as a normal PC, so take that into consideration too.

Yeah, I wonder if it will be possible to run mods or install some other version of Linux on it to use it as a computer, might not be possible if they plan to lock it down.

Looks like it's confirmed now: it's running Linux. That's obviously not surprising given the recent Linux port of Steam, but the confirmation still makes me very very happy. Even if I don't buy the Valve console, this almost definitely means Linux ports of more games in the future, and maybe I can finally be rid of my Windows video game partition forever.

I wonder what the price difference will (or won't) be between a Valve linux based one, and a third party making a windows steambox based on the windows license cost.

I wonder if Microsoft would even be willing to license Windows for such a thing at any kind of discount. This is a threat to both their own console and their own Windows 8 app store so it's difficult to imagine that they would want to play ball.

The only reason Dell and others get Windows so cheap is because MS cuts deals with them, and MS would not be obligated to do the same for Valve or anybody they consider competition.

I imagine Valve chose Linux purely for business reasons rather than technical ones. They can't afford to have their future tied to MS when MS is basically now competing directly with Steam.

I wonder if Microsoft would even be willing to license Windows for such a thing at any kind of discount. This is a threat to both their own console and their own Windows 8 app store so it's difficult to imagine that they would want to play ball.

Wouldn't that entail an abuse of their market position, ie. anti-trust laws?

Besides, if they put Windows 8 on it, it's not like MS isn't making some money from the deal. The Windows app store will still be there, and they obviously get some money from the license sales. I believe Polygon had a mention that Valve wouldn't cut out other app stores like Origin from their platform, so I don't see why they would block the Windows app store if there are Windows variants of the Steam Box.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's just good to know that you're already thinking about your FFXV yaoi fanfic.

Looks like it's confirmed now: it's running Linux. That's obviously not surprising given the recent Linux port of Steam, but the confirmation still makes me very very happy. Even if I don't buy the Valve console, this almost definitely means Linux ports of more games in the future, and maybe I can finally be rid of my Windows video game partition forever.

it's smart to keep the Valve Box and PC's running a "Valve" blessed Linux Build with their Steam client essentially "equal" as it means their installed base isnt just limited to those who buy the dedicated Valve box. In the end though unless the installed numbers are high enough you won't see this put any serious dent in Windows gaming. But for indie development it could be a really nice platform.

Aint nothing new about the world order..it's been playing since the day they put George Washington on a quarterDelivering Truth while the 10% deliver lies.

Combined with linux (and probably other OEMs with windows boxes), I'll be interested what performance level it actually comes out at. My impression for most of the linux games currently on steam is that you could get away with more modest CPU/GPU than making something capable of the whole windows range.

On the other hand making a modest steam-linux-box may constrain what developers are willing to do with it, setting a low ceiling that constrains what developers are willing to port to it, or gives a bad impression of linux/PC gaming with low detail settings on modern games.

Combined with linux (and probably other OEMs with windows boxes), I'll be interested what performance level it actually comes out at. My impression for most of the linux games currently on steam is that you could get away with more modest CPU/GPU than making something capable of the whole windows range

One of my co-workers is using the Linux beta on his home PC and says that while Trine 2 looks really good, the Linux performance could be better. I think there's going to be increased pressure on the GPU driver writers to up their game if this is to get out of the niche market.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's just good to know that you're already thinking about your FFXV yaoi fanfic.

Right, there's always been the occasional linux port of the latest demanding game, because it's the same graphics, running the same game code on a slightly different version of the engine on the same hardware, but up to now my expectation would be that 'graphically demanding game' equals windows.

I think they need to be careful not to fragment the PC platform more than they need to. Right now windows pretty much rules, OSX gets a few ports, and linux the odd few scraps off the table. With them bringing steam to linux and the steambox indirectly promoting the linux flavour of PC gaming, I hope they don't starve it of air (limited hardware) as it wouldn't be making the most of the opportunity that all parts of the PC platform can gain from. If more developers start porting to linux I can see more making a mac port at the same time, and an increased total audience benefits everyone.

One of my co-workers is using the Linux beta on his home PC and says that while Trine 2 looks really good, the Linux performance could be better. I think there's going to be increased pressure on the GPU driver writers to up their game if this is to get out of the niche market.

Steam seems to have spurred a lot of OS X graphics driver work that wouldn't have otherwise happened. I remember a couple OS X updates that specifically mentioned Source engine performance improvements.

If they're doing anything like the Xi3 PC on their kickstarter, it's only running at 20 watts. Not exactly a gaming powerhouse. So hopefully they're building something very different with Xi3 than they've shown before.

If they're doing anything like the Xi3 PC on their kickstarter, it's only running at 20 watts. Not exactly a gaming powerhouse. So hopefully they're building something very different with Xi3 than they've shown before.

In a comparison versus consoles, existing consoles and trying to predict the next gen, I think for straight gaming that's going to be a tough sell to the general consumer. They'll have to play up it's other strengths, by which point they could be making comparisons to non-gaming mac/PCs.

That said, given that it's probably running a full fledged (desktop?) OS and there's the big picture browser for example, it can do 'serious business' computing as well, the competition can't just offer a weak token effort in pretty much any area of apps on offer and claim "oh, putting a port of X on our hardware is a big task and that lite version we've done in the past 5 years was a labor of love for our coding ninjas".

In a comparison versus consoles, existing consoles and trying to predict the next gen, I think for straight gaming that's going to be a tough sell to the general consumer. They'll have to play up it's other strengths, by which point they could be making comparisons to non-gaming mac/PCs.

Price is what's going to shove this into the niche market, guaranteed. Same reason why all of Razor's fancy products like the Switchblade fizzled after the CES buzz.

The only way they can get the price down is if Valve subsidizes the hardware costs, and I don't think the margins on Steam games is enough to give them a lot of wiggle room there.

Will have to see what the specs are on the $499 model before making a final judgement.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

It's just good to know that you're already thinking about your FFXV yaoi fanfic.

That price is a pretty tough sell. And it likely means that the plan is not to compete in the console market, it's competing to replace your desktop machine. I can imagine entertaining the idea of picking one up when my current PC is just too old but then it'll come down to what I can get for the same money elsewhere.

I like to imagine that the first message sent across the internet in 1969 was "LOL your ping time sucks"

I'm curious. It depends on the specs and price, but my pc is over 4 years old. If this is comparable to the price of upgrading my pc I would be interested. It also seems like a great way to be able to play pc games on my TV, since my tv is not near my desktop.